HP Pre 3 Due for Release

The HP Pre 3 has been available in Germany for some time, but as of the 17th it will be available in the UK too from Clove Technology. With a lot of people waiting excitedly for this next instalment in the HP Pre series, we’re taking a closer look at it to see if you should be exchanging your phone for one of these smartphone sliders.

The Pre 3, as it prefers to be called, combines all the greatness of touchscreen smartphones with the advantages of a slider, protecting your buttons when it’s in your pocket. Not so bad, so far. The touchscreen display is 3.58 inches on a diagonal and offers a reasonably high-resolution image for its size at 480×800 pixels. 24-bit colour offers a reasonable display indeed, and this certainly won’t be letting it down although it won’t win any prizes in the size-related stakes and those downgrading from an iPhone or HTC may find themselves uncomfortably getting reacquainted with smaller screens.

The camera is reasonably standard with 5 megapixels and essentially, all the same features you can expect from a bog-standard phone.

The 1.4 Ghz CPU is, at least, reasonably impressive and eight 8 or 16GB of internal storage should see to your needs. At the very least, it isn’t losing any contests there – but it isn’t exactly winning any, either. The same goes for the 512MB of RAM.

But where it does outrank some of its contemporaries is in the connectivity stakes. Sure, Bluetooth, WiFi, 4G… Fine. But the Touch to Share technology it shares with the HP Touchpad is where it shines. You can easily share things between your Touchpad and your Pre³, without any trouble and literally by pressing a button. Handy, right? Well… It is if you happen to have a Touchpad.

The Pre³ looks sleek and lovely, but with today’s crop of touchscreen-only phones we can’t help but think it’s a little outdated. It’s very middle-of-the-road in every way except the Touch to Share functionality… Which is only available if you already own the Touchpad or plan to buy one. All in all, I won’t be saving my pennies for this phone, but if you end up with one it should definitely see you right.